By Taylor LaJeunesse, LPC and John Howard, LMFT
Where It Starts: One Foot on the Gas, One on the Break
Attachment disorganization can form in childhood when the person or people you depended on for safety was also, at times, a source of fear or unpredictability. Perhaps a caregiver was loving and available while sober but frightening while drinking, or warm and connected some days but explosive or withdrawn when overwhelmed. Growing up with volatile or inconsistent caregivers creates an incredibly difficult situation for a child. You need your caregiver for comfort and safety, but you also sometimes need to protect yourself from them. This is sometimes describes as having one foot on the gas and one on the brake, wanting closeness but then being naturally suspicious and on-guard in relationships. Part of you wants to move toward connection, while another part is afraid of what might happen if you do and can feel more “at risk” or insecure as relationships deepen into that territory where they can hurt you.
What Disorganization Looks Like in the Moment
The disorganized pattern of relating usually shows up as acting out rather than relating in a calm, grounded manner. It often involves reacting with sudden anger, picking unnecessary fights when feeling vulnerable, engaging in rude behavior such as name calling, going after people when upset, and generally displaying unpredictable or inconsistent behavior. It can involve withdrawing and refusing to engage, or engaging in an overly aggressive or volatile manner, such as storming out of a room, raising one’s voice or unnecessary physical displays of anger and aggression. It involves relationship sabotage or self-sabotage, escalating when not necessary and threatening the relationship.
What’s Really Driving the Reaction
These behaviors are usually due to feeling triggered by vulnerable feelings such as insecurity, feeling threatened, or fear, and not having a secure internal base to process and metabolize those emotions. The pattern begins in childhood but can often be corrected through therapy and via secure adult relationships. Trauma-based disorganization is different from personality-based disorganization and is treated differently. While some behavioral symptoms can be similar, the underlying reasons and structure for those behaviors is different. They are often confused, but a skilled clinician can help clients tell the difference and choose the right approach.
How It Shows Up in Adult Relationships
As an adult, disorganized attachment can show up as wanting someone close and then suddenly pushing them away when triggered. You might feel an intense urge to escape, become very angry or scared during conflict, or shut down and feel disconnected from yourself or the people around you. Dissociation, such as feeling checked out, disconnected from yourself or your surroundings, or not fully present, can also be part of this pattern. Sometimes the intensity of the reaction can feel confusing, especially when one part of you knows that the present situation doesn't fully explain how threatened you feel.
We call the pattern of behavior ‘disorganized pockets’ because it does not reflect the overall or core personality or disposition of the person, but rather shows up when in unregulated fear and in triggered states. These states can be regulated by other means with the person learning how to self and co-regulate in order to reduce the frequency of incidents.
Shame vs Core Shame
Be aware that there can be a significant amount of shame involved in disorganized behaviors. People feel shame because they temporarily lose control of their words, emotion and actions and then come back to their core, organized selves later once the trigger subsides. When they reflect on their behavior, they feel shame that they aren’t healthier, or more mature, or able to regulate the insecurity better. The shame is a good thing in that it indicates remorse, an awareness that the behaviors aren’t great, and a desire to be better and more healed, all positive goals. It’s a bigger problem when people don’t feel shame about these behaviors. But we don’t want normal shame to become core shame. The difference is shame = I’m a good person and my behavior was bad; core shame = I’m a shitty person because I keep engaging in shitty behavior. One is a healthy recognition of problematic behavior we want to improve, the other attacks our sense of self and makes us feel awful inside, and can at times diminish the desire to even work to improve. When you feel shame, remind yourself that you’re a good person working to improve, and you feel shame because you care and have a good conscience.
It is important to understand that disorganized attachment is not a personality disorder or psychiatric diagnosis. There can be overlap between disorganized attachment and symptoms associated with diagnoses like borderline personality disorder, including sensitivity to rejection, intense emotions, difficulty feeling secure in relationships, and dissociation, but they are not the same thing. A personality disorder involves a broader and persistent pattern of symptoms across different areas of a person's life, such as a regular pattern of volatile and aggressive behavior, a lack of interest in self-discovery and self-awareness, inability to receive feedback and apologize, the need to blame others for negative dynamics, and little improvement of behavior over time. Disorganized attachment specifically helps us understand what happens around closeness, dependence, and safety in relationships and is a more malleable condition subject to improvement with the right approach.
Your Reactions Make Sense
For many people, having language for this experience can be a relief. Your reactions have a history and they make sense in the context in which they developed. When you were young, pulling away, clinging to connection, becoming hyperaware of someone's mood, freezing, or checking out may have been the best options your nervous system had. The problem is that strategies that once helped protect you can make safe adult relationships much harder.
Slowing Down and the Protective Response
Healing starts with noticing when you have moved into one of these protective states and slowing things down. Rather than immediately acting on the urge to leave, push someone away, or pull them closer, you can begin asking: What am I feeling right now? What feels threatening? Does any part of this feeling seem familiar? What do I need in order to feel a little safer and more present? It’s good to breathe, take a few beats to stabilize your internal state, and then determine if you could use some space or some support from a partner. It’s important to learn internal resourcing in therapy and begin practicing the techniques in those moments. Both internal resourcing and co-regulation offer effective ways to reduce symptoms and heal the disorganized internal structure over time.
How Safe Relationships Rewire the Pattern
Safe and consistent relationships can give your nervous system a new experience of safety and security in relationships. You learn that conflict can be repaired, that another person's frustration doesn't necessarily mean abandonment, that you can have boundaries without losing connection. Closeness does not have to mean losing yourself, and you learn to protect and defend your younger and vulnerable parts kindly and in secure relational ways, not needing volatility, pushing away, attack or aggression to do so. You begin to feel calm and centered in yourself and able to relate to others with maturity, even with in difficult emotions.
Try to have compassion for the parts of you that still respond this way. They learned to protect you in relationships where safety wasn't always guaranteed. Healing is the process of helping them learn that they have more options now, and disorganization improves as you heal and practice the antidotes.
